Orwell Could Have Written "1498": the US homeland is a foreign corporation

essay

"... the walls of Santo Domingo were covered with graffiti condemning the Canadian mining company Barrick Gold, which had been exploring and exploiting the countryside. Much on Hispaniola had changed in the more than five centuries since Columbus's arrival, but the foreign quest for gold had stayed the same."
- from Empire of Borders: The Expansion Of The U.S. Border Around The World by Todd Miller


The year number in my headline is off six years, but it's the gist that's significant. Orwell is praised for his prescience with the 1949 publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four, also published as 1984. Of recent years, 1984 is probably the most referenced book (along with Huxley’s Brave New World) for eerily predicting and depicting much of what's actually happening nowadays.

While watching a 2018 video-talk by Tink Tinker (Osage/wazhazhe) at Yale Divinity School, "Individual Salvation vs. Cosmic Balance: An American Indian Perspective,” i learned of an organization called Friends of the Indian. It's the opposite of what it sounds like. This led me to realize that Orwell's presentation of doublespeak goes back to the 1800s, and even further back to 1492 with Columbus’s arrival.

”Doublespeak” is “language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. The term "doublespeak" derives from two concepts in George Orwell's novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, "doublethink" and "Newspeak", despite the term itself not being used in the novel. Another version of the term, "doubletalk," also referring to intentionally ambiguous speech, did exist at the time Orwell wrote his book, but the usage of "doublespeak", as well as of "doubletalk", in the sense of emphasizing ambiguity, clearly predates the publication of the novel.”

I remember a phrase, from Cowboys and Indians movies, that the White man speaks with forked tongue. That goes further back, too.

"According to one 1859 account, the native proverb that the "white man spoke with a forked tongue" originated as a result of the French tactic of the 1690s, in their war with the Iroquois, of inviting their enemies to attend a Peace Conference, only to be slaughtered or captured."

Not only has “the foreign quest for gold … stayed the same,” so has the duplicity. I am not foolish nor rushing to judgment in assuming that virtually everything the government and their corporate media mouthpieces say or promote is the opposite of what's actually happening.

Of recent examples:
The Global War On Terror (GWOT), according to a 2021 report: “Costs of the 20-year war on terror: $8 trillion and 900,000 deaths”

Thus it can aptly be called a Global War OF Terror (GWOfT).

When the War On Drugs began, drug use was down; say whuh?! The standout quote for me from Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow:
”…the odd coincidence that an illegal drug crisis suddenly appeared in the black community after—not before—a drug war had been declared. In fact, the War on drugs began at a point when illegal drug use was on the decline.”

Add to that:
”The CIA admitted in 1998 that guerilla armies it actively supported in Nicaragua were smuggling illegal drugs into the United States—drugs that were making their way onto the streets of inner-city black neighborhoods in the form of crack cocaine.”

While Ehrlichman’s family members and former Nixon aides dispute the authenticity of the statement attributed to him, it’s still worth considering:

“You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the [Vietnam] war or blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Plus a book am 55 pages into, We Sell Drugs: The Alchemy of US Empire by Suzanna Reiss.

Thus it can aptly be called, War OF Drugs.

with friends like these, who needs enemies?
According to Wikipedia:

"The Friends of the Indian was a group that pushed for Indian assimilation during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After dealing with "the Indian problem" through treaties, removal, and reservations, the Federal Government of The United States moved toward a method that is now referred to as assimilation. The Friends of the Indian group, which was largely connected to and intertwined with the Office of Indian Affairs within the Federal Government presented themselves as speaking on behalf of Native Americans who they viewed as unable to speak for themselves. They claimed that the best course of action for Native Americans was to assimilate them into the larger American culture, rather than allowing them to maintain their existing native cultures. The Friends used many tactics to push for said assimilation. Some went and lived with tribes, or contributed to the new discipline of anthropology to establish themselves as experts and push for cultural change. Some wrote books and essays about the poor treatment of Indians they had seen in the past and how this treatment might be improved. Others lobbied for legislative change through the Federal Government. The Friends of the Indian played a large role in the assimilation of American Indians by pushing for the passing of the Dawes Act, the Indian Citizenship Act, the creation and use of Indian boarding schools, and the continuation of an expectation that Indians could not speak for themselves.

“The "Indian problem"
Since the beginning of America, the United States government faced what it has called the "Indian problem" or the "Indian question." The government wanted the land that Native Americans inhabited for themselves and used several different approaches to get it. Since 1787, interactions between Native peoples and the Federal Government have gone through what can be divided into six distinct phases: agreements between equals (1787-1828), removal and reservations (1828-1887), allotment and assimilation (1887-1934), reorganization (1928-1953), termination and relocation (1953-1968), and self-determination (1968–present). The Friends of the Indian were primarily active during the period of allotment and assimilation from 1887 to 1934."

A recent addition to the exposing of the doublethink/speak pattern is Peter d’Errico’s book Federal Anti-Indian Law: The Legal Entrapment of Indigenous Peoples (2024).

He writes:
“Every U.S. program supposedly designed to “help” Natives has actually aimed to terminate the independent status of Indigenous peoples and assimilate Native persons as individuals in American society. Each successive U.S. effort raised the promise of a “final solution” to the “Indian problem” that would consummate the U.S. claim of ownership to Indigenous lands and domination over Indigenous peoples. I use the phrase “final solution” advisedly, considering its notorious association with the Nazi genocide project. But, as we have seen, the word “genocide” precisely characterizes U.S. actions toward Indigenous peoples.”

This is about much more than simply deception, lying, and forked tongues, because those are only tactics of the deeper plan to wipe out Native cultures via assimilation and destruction of lands where sacred ceremonies and age-old cultural practices happen.

Perhaps the biggest Orwellian trickery (including Woody Guthrie’s song) has been convincing millions of Americans that: this land is my homeland. And the “foreign quest for” ________ continues.

As current examples:

Apache Stronghold recently went to the Supreme Court so as to stop destruction of their sacred lands by the mining corporation Rio Tinto.

Rio Tinto is a “British-Australian multinational company that is the world's second largest metals and mining corporation (behind BHP).”

“BHP, officially named BHP Group Limited and formerly known as BHP Billiton, is an Australian multinational mining and metals public company headquartered in Melbourne, Australia.”

Since when do foreign corporations get priorities over US, actually Native, lands? Since 1492.

Allowing the destruction of Apache lands and their ancient cultural practices for mining would be like tearing down St. Patrick’s Cathedral to put up a McDonald’s. I pray the Supreme Court realizes that—otherwise their robes are not worth the cloth they’re made of.

Peehee Mu'huh, aka Thacker Pass, sacred lands of the Paiute/Shoshone are already being destroyed by lithium mining for so-called renewable green energy for electric vehicles despite attempts to stop them. The mining company there has affiliations with Canada and a Chinese company.

Yet another layer comes on October 1, from Harold Daggert, President of International Longshoreman’s Associates, with regard to the International Longshoremen’s Association strike:

“You gotta draw the line. These companies that work in the maritime business come from overseas, not one of them belongs to America. They wanna come into America and build fully automated [terminals] and get rid of American jobs.”

Global corporate empire is neither friend to Americans nor Natives.

And speaking of maritime business from overseas . . .

pre-Orwellian
As to the subtitle of this post: “the US homeland is a foreign corporation”:

from Sir Robert Heath's Patent 5 Charles 1st; October, 30 1629:
“…Whereas our beloved and faithful subject and servant Sr Robert Heath Knight our Atturney Generall, kindled with a certain laudable and pious desire as well of enlarging the Christian religion as our Empoire & encreasing the Trade & Commerce of this our kingdom…”

I sum that up as theofascism, the combination of a foreign religion forced on others combined with enforced government and corporate domination.

From Jack Weatherford’s book Indian Givers:
“…Hudson’s "Bay Company, the oldest company in the world. The company has operated continuously since May 2, 1670, when King Charles II chartered it as the Honourable Company of Adventurers of England Trading in Hudson’s Bay; it was both the last of the great mercantile companies and the first modern corporation.”

And from my February 2024 poem “Super Bowl Sunday Satire with Slices of Truth”:

“we shouldn't forget! should remember!….
that the Saint Francis team name comes from 1849
when prospectors from the eastern US, from Europe and China
and Mexico and South America bolted to California
through the Great Plains and into the West Coast
to strike Manifest Destiny gold which brought disease
and an estimated 120,000 Natives lives lost in so-called California,
then fast-forward to 1920s,
black-gold aka oil discovered in Osage lands, so-called Oklahoma,
what the film Killers of the Flower Moon is about,
fast-forward to 2020s Nevada, white-gold aka lithium,
btw the Bowl at Allegiant Stadium in Paradise, Nevada, and
also in so-called Nevada, Thacker Pass, Paiute/Shoshone lands,
now being destroyed by lithium mining, plus
over 21,000 lithium claims in Nevada…”

Adding to the foreign corporations in the business of destroying Earth are governmental leaders like Zelensky and Netanyahu who frequently visit and get standing ovations at Congressional meetings and Wall St., though recently at the UN in response to Netanyahu, “over half of the delegates staged a mass walkout.” Cue Mussolini’s definition of corporatism/fascism: government and corporation working together. And the wars with their bombs destroy Earth, too.

What Columbus represented was Orwellian from the get-go.

Patriotism on foreign soil is doublethink.

Therefore, i encourage Americans to stop being so shocked that Orwell’s 1984 is suddenly happening today and instead learn from some history that what’s happening is an exacerbated form of the same old theofascist plunder.

Learn from some history and show respect for the traditional Original Peoples of this land they call (in English) Turtle Island.

Learn from the history so as to stop the foreign and domestic efforts to make clean water and clean soil history.

Learn how to commune with your natural surroundings and be guided by the timelessly organic wise ways of, to name a few: trees, birds, rocks, and the soil that grows the foods that nourish you . . . . . And commune with friends and family . . . and build community . . . . .